CBR Interview with Dan Didio

CBR has just released an interview with DC Publisher Dan Didio. The interview was conducted at Fan Expo Toronto in August, shortly before DC’s relaunch officially began (with Justice League #1). Dan had this to say about Wonder Woman:

CBR: Shifting topics a bit, let’s discuss Wonder Woman. There’s a sense from fans that DC hasn’t been happy with her in a long time. In recent years, she’s received a lot of makeovers, shall we say, especially considering the past year with both the infamous pants re-design and the [14]-issue run by J. Michael Straczynski and Phil Hester.

Didio: Again, if you look at the history of the character, she has constantly changed. She has gone from the early ’40s version, there was a definite interpretation during the ’60s and they tried to stretch her out in almost the same way they did Superman, with Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl. They tried to rebuild the franchise in that fashion. Then, you get into the late ’60s and she takes on, as we call it, the “Emma Peel” look, where she loses the powers and puts on the jump suit. You get past that, and what’s Wonder Woman in the ’70s? Well, then she gets her powers back, and she goes to the Goddess thing, but then she goes to World War II, and she comes back from World War II. Then we have a couple more changes along the way. We get a little more stability when George Perez comes in in the ’80s, and that seems to hold for a while, but even then, we have the changes that take place with Artemis, and she’s working [at] Taco Bell or wherever else she’s working at that time, so you have a lot of changes there too. Then we roll through the ’90s and we get into 2000. Now, we have much more of a warrior woman and a social diplomat. We’ve had Hippolyta alive, we’ve had Hippolyta dead, we’ve had Paradise Island there — it’s one of those things that’s constant evolving.

There are a lot of key things that we wanted to address in the [New 52 Wonder Woman] concept. The good part about the relaunch is that Brian Azzarello is addressing a lot of things at the core. There are people in her life, but she’s never had that strong rogues gallery as existed with other heroes, and she’s never really had that strong supporting cast. You had Steve Trevor, you had Etta Candy, you had a couple of the Amazons, but for a character who’s had almost a 70-year history, that’s not a real big well to draw from. We’re trying to fill that well now.

CBR: So that was a big factor — introducing new characters?

Didio: Oh yes, absolutely. Without getting into too much detail, you’re going to be finding and meeting Wonder Woman’s family.

CBR: Having seen the cover of issue #3, people have been suggesting online that perhaps the reveal that will be pissing Hera off is that Diana is Zeus’ illegitimate daughter.

Didio: [Laughs] Well, if anybody knows, it’s — well, let’s put it this way: there are a lot of twists and turns in the future of “Wonder Woman.”

CBR: I wanted to ask how you felt about the “Odyssey” storyline from this past year, beginning with the fact that DC renumbered Wonder Woman to issue 600…

Didio: Yeah.

CBR: Fans were excited…

Didio: Yup!

CBR: Then it went straight out the window…

Didio: Yup!

CBR: And people’s first reactions were to be, frankly, pissed.

Didio: I was disappointed with how it went, but I was encouraged by how much effort was put into trying to keep it on track as much as possible. [The] problem was that Joe Straczynski was over-committed. Joe tried to work with us, and he made his plots and his storylines available to us to keep it going. But it’s always difficult to implement other people’s visions, because he had a very distinct vision for what he had planned for Wonder Woman. I think Phil [Hester] did a wonderful job taking what he had and trying to make it his own. We had a lot of things that were just working against us. For everybody that was involved in that project, from Joe and Phil through all the artists that were involved, everybody gave it their full effort. Some things work, some things don’t work, but our main goal is looking forward right now and concentrating on how to make sure everything’s as strong as it can be.

That’s all to be said about Wonder Woman, but you can read the full interview over at CBR!

The post from CBR also shows off this piece of Wonder Woman art from Cliff Chiang: